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Stuff we know so far: He has a beard, it’s not set in New York, it’s not being developed by Remedy and it’ll be multi-platform (yes, I know MP/MP2 were released on the consoles, but that always seemed like an afterthought).

I know it’s a bit childish of me but I can’t help being excited by this! I hope Tworak is wrong and Remedy have some creative input to the project. I also hope they pick up on the mythological references from the first game again. They sort of left all that hanging in the second one.

Looks to me like Rockstar just grabbed some random character from GTA and put his face next to the title for no apparent reason. I guess it’s cheaper than having to pay your artists to draw a *new* angry-looking dude, when they have so many already.

I hope I’m wrong but I’m getting all kinds of bad feelings from this. The visual stylings for that character seem contrary to that of the previous two games, which sets a bad precedent for the rest of the game.

Hmm. I have a beard, but that doesn’t mean I have to like ’em. I play games for the escapism, damnit.

My first thought when I read they’d changed devs was ‘no Remedy, no sale’. On reflection, that’s unfair, but I really hope these Rockstar Canuck types ‘get’ what makes the series so great. By which I mean, of course, that they have to adhere to exactly what I want from a Max Payne game or I’m gonna BAWWWWWW.

Here’s the wonderful, magical secret ingredient of Max Paynes 1 and 2: They’re pretty standard third-person shooters wrapped in the trimmings of a stereotypically hard-boiled noir plot. They’re also completely hilarious and charming. But Remedy pitched them straight down the middle – they don’t pander, or try to make obvious jokes that parody the genre. They dead-pan the whole thing (the narrative delivered literally in monotone) and allow the inherent ridiculousness of noirish hyper-masculinity to create the comedy, the charm.

Hmm. I’m not sure I articulated that to a point that even I was satisfied with, so I guess it’ll hardly be a travesty if the new devs don’t magically cotton on.

Guess I’ll settle for some overwrought dialogue and some smooth-as-fuck bullet time. Every game has bullet time, but Max Payne ripped off the Matrix first – so I’m expecting some Goddamn bullet time renaissance to be going on here. This game better be the Ketel One of targeting suckas in real time while the bullets’re flyin’ at the speed a redneck gets through the alphabet, to (badly) paraphrase Ray for a moment.

Did he retire at the end of the second game? Can’t remember. Anyways… at least they decided to not stretch out the marketing over multiple years. (as long as it’s reallly coming out in 09) I like that trend. Well…

I looked at myself. A beard now hung from my face like an angry Canadian bear. I was bloody, scarred. Scars that ran deep enough to bury the past. I looked at the image that bears my name, but it was no longer me.

There’s a PC version mentioned in the press release. No logo on the website though. Maybe that’s good. Maybe that means they’ve ditched GfW Live and just had nothing to put there. Or (the sad version) there’s no mistake on the website, just a mistake in the press release.
Also, l1ddl3monkey wins this article’s comments section.

Oh hell, I’m going to go against the flow and retain my optimism; I loved the first two games. I just hope it’s not the disappointment that “Strangehold” was – a John Woo sequel done as a Max Payne-a-like should have been pure win for me.

Seriously, am I the only one that remembers that Max Payne had those ridiculously stupid “run on bloody veins through space” areas? Hopefully Rockstar will do away with that in favor of some more reasonable way to combat the demons from your past. Also, the story wasn’t exactly … deep, although very well done, I’m pretty hopeful that Rockstar can improve that area as well. The 2 “legacies”, for lack of a better word, that Rockstar will have to keep in mind are the combat and the character development, those are the things that I think most people remember and love from the original games.

Sorry for the double post, I tried to edit the last one, and it went completely insane. I had a %20 after every word.

The “run on bloody veins through space” wasn’t too bad the first time; putting it in MP1 twice was overdoing it, though. Max Payne 2 at least had more variation in its weird hallucinations. But you can’t remove the weird, gunplayless levels without jeopardising the whole uber-noir self-mocking nature that made the games so entertaining: they’re Max’s pink flamingo, having fun with mirrors and dyeing Mona’s hair red.

But, speaking of self-mocking, given how DMA Design have apparently steadily lost the art of subtely in their parody—go fire up GTA3 and listen to the radio commercials, then compare to Vice City, then San Andreas—I suspect BooleanBob will be crying his rabbity little eyes out.

Sam Lake doing the story.
Timothy Gibbs for the look of Max.
James McCaffrey for the voice of Max.
Main theme performed by Perttu Kivilaakso of Apocalyptica.
Credits song by Poets of the Fall based on Sam Lake poem.

OK, most of that is likely to be fanboyisms, but if Sam Lake isn’t involved in the story, even on an advisory level, I’d be concerned. I hate talk of taking things in a “new direction”.

I think I must have played that section where you happen upon a few henchmen standing around a grand piano, one playing a bizarrely Bruce Hornsby-like melody, ohh, several million times. Dropping a grenade in slo-mo among them next got old.

@The Poisoned Sponge, nah, what will happen is that Max Payne is going to grow to about 7 feet tall and get metal teeth. Or grow a third nipple, live on a tropical island, and become a world famour assassin whilst using a gun made from a lighter and a pen. Gun wounds to the head do ka-razy things after all, other than kill you.

oceanclub: It’s “Late Goodbye”, the same song that people hum throughout the game, and that plays over the credits. As Rei pointed out, it was based upon a poem by one of the devs. (Wikipedia, as always, has more spew if you want it.)

The franchise hung off of my shoulders like the pelt of a bear, a once mighty creature, now a shadow of it’s former self. Kinda reminded me of me. I wanted to come in from the cold and the dark, but even inside I was met with a frosty reception.

Although let it be noted that, as long as Sam Lake at least maintains in an advisory position concerning the story (though I’d prefer he take an active role) and as long as James Mccaffrey still does the voice I’ll probably still be getting this.